So, I Called the Cops on my Grandma.

This is 20% a story about how the inevitable happened – my anxiety finally got the best of me. But mostly, it’s just a funny story that I wanted to share instead of hiding it away out of extreme embarrassment.

Picture this: It’s Tuesday afternoon. Around 1:30 p.m. Jeff and I are on reading week. In case you didn’t know, we currently live in my grandmother’s basement apartment. It snowed on Tuesday. My grandmother gets nervous about driving in the snow, so she asks Jeff if he’ll drive her to a bank appointment. He says yes.

1:40 p.m. They leave. I don’t hear the upstairs door lock. I’m in the middle of a Hearthstone game (if you don’t know what this is, don’t google it because you’ll find out how much of a nerd I am), so I decide, “meh, they’ll be home soon. I won’t lock it.”

1:45 p.m. Feeling a bit nervous about the door being unlocked, but still too lazy to lock it.

2:00 p.m. There’s some banging around the door. The door opens. I smile as I expect my husband to stomp down the stairs and rejoin me for our Lost season two marathon.

He doesn’t come down. I don’t hear his voice. I don’t hear my grandma’s voice. All I hear is stomping around and cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen. At one point, the phone rings. No one answers it.

My reaction:

Jeff has never stayed upstairs for longer than it takes to take off his shoes. Nonna, my grandmother, ALWAYS answers her phone. She is on the phone 24/7. After 10 minutes of no voices and no husband, I try to call Jeff’s cell phone. I listen to see if it rings upstairs.

It doesn’t. He doesn’t answer.

At this point, I am 100% convinced someone who is not supposed to be in the house is in the house. One of my biggest fears has finally happened. I am home alone in a house with a burglar/murderer/burglar-murderer.

So, I did what anyone would do (maybe). I called 911.

I was on the phone with the (very nice) dispatch lady for about five minutes before the police officer arrived. Now, this is where it gets good. I’m having trouble even figuring out what I should reveal first. Let’s just get straight to it.

Obviously, from the title, you know there was no intruder.

My grandmother decided to “shovel” the doorway when she came home from the bank. And by shovel, I mean she smashed a broom around the front door for a while until most of the snow disappears.

Well, being almost 80 years old, she hurt her knees while brooming away the snow. An injured Nonna then hobbles through the house, searching desperately for her tylenols in every cabinet possible. Jeff, being the kind man that he is, decided to not only shovel our driveway, but also the neighbours (hence why he did not come downstairs when the door opened).

So, a confused Jeff is confronted by a police officer who asks “What’s going on here, sir?”

“Uh…I’m…shovelling?”
“Sir, we received a call about a break & enter at this address.”
“Uhh…”
“We received a call from a…yes…Lauren…”

I’m sure it took Jeff everything within him to not burst out laughing at this point.

Now, around the time this conversation is happening, I hear Nonna’s voice upstairs. I tell the dispatcher lady and she says the officer is at my house, so it’s safe to go upstairs. I do. And…everything is (of course) normal. Now, I begin to feel like a complete moron. I don’t know the whole story, but it seems pretty clear that no one broke into this house.

A second later, Jeff comes in with the police officer. After hearing the story from Nonna and Jeff, we conclude that it was all a big misunderstanding. The officer is super awesome about it, and he leaves.

This happened almost a week ago, and it does seem funny now. But at the time, I was completely convinced that there was a dangerous person in my house. My imagination has gotten the best of me millions of times before, but this is the first time I actually ACTED on it. Anxiety, I hate you.

Just read this from your link in your latest post and have to share a similar story.

So, I’ve suffered from (mostly severe) depression since my teens. I’ve sometimes been afraid it will turn into psychotic depression i.e. I will start hallucinating or suffering delusions. (I have actually had brief moments of what might have been psychotic delusions and they were super-scary, but that isn’t the subject of this story.)

So, one night when I was still living with my parents I went down to the kitchen late at night, after everyone else was in bed, to get a snack. At the time the depression was really bad and I wasn’t working and was pretty much nocturnal. I thought I could hear a faint noise, like people whispering. At first I thought it was my imagination, but it persisted, so I wondered if one of the appliances was making a funny noise or if the gas was on. So I went around the kitchen listening to the hob, the radio, the fridge (etc.) trying to work out where the noise was coming from, but I couldn’t find it. I started to panic, thinking I was hearing voices and then I realized the noise was coming from my Mum’s handbag. That made me almost certain I was going crazy and I was about to wake up my parents and get them to take me to the psychiatric hospital when I looked in the bag and found my Mum had left her little radio on…